Women and human rights in the Middle East

Women in the Middle East were, and are still, facing many hardships and challenges on different economic, social and cultural fronts. When the winds of change started to blow throughout the Middle East, Arab women were on the front lines organizing, volunteering and even leading the protests across Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria and Tunisia. Arab women shared a strong belief that the time had finally come to demand their fundamental rights after decades of political and social stagnation in their countries. In spite of the uncertainty that still surrounds the future of these uprisings, women in the Middle East are increasingly aware of the obstacles in their way and determined more than ever to overcome these hardships and to realize their long-awaited aspirations of equal citizenship, parity and equal opportunity.

On February 21, 2013, the Kelly Day Endowment for the Status of Women and Human Rights in the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute will host an important conference on “The Arab Awakening and Gender: Challenges and Opportunities for Women.” This conference will bring in a group of the most prominent female figures in the Arab world, with very diverse backgrounds ranging from blogging and journalism to entrepreneurship, economics, religious law, sociopolitical activism and civil society organizations. The goal of the conference is to shed the light on the achievements as well as on the existing obstacles for female empowerment in the region, and to highlight the importance of a more active role for U.S. foreign policy in the field of gender equality in the region after the Arab Awakening.

Marwa Shalaby, Ph.D., is the postdoctoral fellow for the Kelly Day Endowment on the Status of Women and Human Rights in the Middle East at the Baker Institute. Her research is in the field of comparative politics and research methodology, with a concentration on Middle Eastern politics, democratization, and gender and politics.

Isabel Kuri is the program coordinator for the Kelly Day Endowment on the Status of Women and Human Rights in the Middle East.

2 Responses

I wish I could attend, this is an area I’ve been interested in since my late teens. The plight of women in the Middle East is unimaginable, and they are so brave to stand up for themselves. Middle Eastern women and other women throughout the world who don’t have the opportunities I do make me really consider how lucky I am!
I’m blessed to have the freedoms I have, and articles like this help remind me of my blessing and to pray that one day women worldwide will know the freedom I know!

Change must come from within, inviting the US in to force change is like inviting a wolf into a sheep pen. Do Arab women want to be like US women with all the social ills that go with it? Western life-style is not necessarily better, it’s just different. And the US has no business forcing other countries to conform to its standard. Freedom means people should be left to make their own choices, and reap consequences.

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